4 Steps: Recharge Your Batteries

Drained and burned out after a long, arduous day at work, you look forward to picking up a six-pick on the drive home, falling into the recliner and powering up the Wii.

Then, you look at the clock. It’s barely 2 p.m. During the toughest, most treacherous days at work when it feels like half past six, somehow it is always only 2 p.m. The realization is demoralizing.

You can not leave work at 2 o'clock every day, nor can you mope about it and drag your butt through the next few hours expecting time to take flight on its own. It never has and it never will, so do something productive and recharge your batteries, in body and in mind.

step 1

Walk away

The first step to recharge your batteries should be the easiest: Take a 10-minute break and leave the office.

After spending an extended length of time working in a single location like your desk, the walls begin to feel oppressive. The stale, recirculated air poses an increasing threat to your health, while the overhead fluorescent lights drain your energy and interest levels. In time, it all combines to overwhelm your senses like white noise — subtle, insidious, mind-numbing. The first step to recharge your batteries is to walk out on that anesthetized environment.

Your perceptive senses desperately need new material, a new set of mild, dynamic stimuli — the kind you find outdoors, where a little breeze and the common commotion of passing cars and chatting strangers provides just enough distraction to jump-start your senses into paying attention again.

step 2

Wake up with water

For all the misleading, unhealthy hype surrounding energy drinks, when your body needs to recharge, it will benefit the most from the one substance it can not do without: water.

One of the contributing factors to your burnout could very well be a simple one to solve: dehydration. You may not feel dehydrated, but in “Hot for Teacher” David Lee Roth didn’t feel tardy — it doesn’t change the fact that dehydration is a direct cause of fatigue, and consequently, it is one factor you can address immediately and effectively when you want to recharge your batteries.

Drinking some water will kick-start your metabolism and allow you to ride a sustainable level of energy and alertness. If you’re not thirsty, splash it on your face. Even better — do both.